Lost Profile – Françoise Sagan (1974 trans. Joanna Kilmartin 1976) 142 pages

This novella follows a young woman, Josée, as she leaves her abusive husband Alan and is drawn into the orbit of the controlling Julius A.Cram, all within the social sphere of incredibly rich Parisian socialites.  

Sagan has very little time for this echelon of society:

“We talked of this and that, in other words nothing, with the tact that characterises well-bred people once they are at table. It seems that it only takes a knife, a fork, a plate and the appearance of the first course to induce a kind of discretion.”

Josée does very little at the start of the novel and seems to drift around, content to be entirely idle, which makes her vulnerable. She blames herself for her husband’s abuse and then in leaving him finds herself controlled by another man, albeit in a very different way. Julius is an enigmatic character who also seems to operate on the periphery of their social set. Both are lonely in their way, and the people they pass time with are entirely self-involved, so with the exception of her friend Didier, there is no-one to warn Josée of the danger she is in.

“It was an idiosyncrasy common to each individual member of that little set to refer to all the rest as ‘the others’, as though he or she were a paragon of virtue and a superior intelligence who had strayed into a bunch of contemptible socialites.”

As Josée tries to get her life together, the reader has greater awareness than she does herself. We can what is happening in her circumstances that she remains blissfully unaware of, and we can see how these circumstances will play out. She is incisive and clearsighted regarding others, but not remotely self-reflective:

“They were an amiable couple, great friends of Irène Debout, who, having exiled themselves far from Paris out of a grotesque affectation for the simple life, spent their time when they came to the capital, roughly 100 times a year, extolling the charms of solitude. They lived for their weekend house parties.”

Lost Profile is a slight tale, but I always enjoy Sagan’s writing. This was mainly enjoyable for the bitchy portraits of the rich and idle – a quick read, just the right length for the subject matter.

“Perhaps, one day, I too would reach the point of being able to tolerate only a sort of carbon copy of myself, black and white, colourless and spineless. Ah yes, the time would come when I would bicycle without ever leaving my bathroom, chewing pills the while to send my feelings to sleep. Muscled legs and flabby heart, a serene face and a dead soul.”

I’ve mentioned before the terrible 1970s/early 80s Penguin covers for Sagan’s work, and this one is no exception: